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Battlefield 3

E3 Update:
Probably my most disappointing demo for the simple fact I played for
exactly 90 seconds.

After listening to the changes and adjustments that DICE were making to
the character classes, especially Medic and Assault classes, I anxiously
anticipated getting to stand at a demo station and play.

I have played many, many hours of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 well beyond
the

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review date, and from what was shown of
Battlefield 3 the game was going to be all that and more. But it's
difficult to say that with absolute certainty simply because I had less
hands-on time with it than the last time I peed thanks to poindexters
standing at the demo stations even before the play time started.

Still, based on past experience, I'm really

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looking forward to Battlefield 3's
multiplayer experience.

(July 12, 2011)

My most recent Battlefield experience was
with Bad Company 2, a game that I played for well over a year. Not the
single-player, which didn't take me that long, but the multiplayer that
I spent literally days playing. Bad Company 2 had some really good
"hooks" that continue to cater to a large audience. Not only were the
maps engaging and extremely well designed for push-pull battles, but the
destructibility of the urban environments really meant there was no safe
corner.

Sniping from a guard tower could quickly be eliminated by a well-place
rocket and camping in a building that could collapse
made every move a considered one and part of a larger strategy. (Just
writing about it makes me want play it again!)

I've seen enough of Battlefield 3 to already be excited about it. It
looks noticeably better than Bad Company 2 thanks to improvements to the
game engine, called Frostbite 2, which appears to make a mockery of the
environmental damage in Bad Company 2. I'm
very interested to see how this kind of large scale destruction is
integrated into multiplayer levels that will be big enough to
accommodate fighter jets. With a 64 player cap on PC I'm looking forward
to some really interesting maps, with some balance between dense urban
settings and open terrain to really take advantage of the vehicle
combat. (On consoles, the player cap is 32 with the map sizes adjusted
accordingly.)

A full single-player campaign will also be
included. The year is 2014 and enough bad stuff is happening that
according to PC Gamer the player will be jetted to "Paris, Tehran,
Sulaymaniyah and New York" for various missions. (I had to look this up:
Sulaymaniyah is in Iraq.) The Battlefield single-player experience has
always seemed like an extended tutorial for the multiplayer mode (with a
few laughs thrown in) and DICE hasn't really released enough details to
make me think otherwise.

It wouldn't surprise me if Battlefield 3's
launch was pushed into 2012, but from what was shown at the recent Game
Developer's Conference and videos that have been showing up online, I'm
hopeful that the game will hit its November 2, 2011 release date.